“I was thinking about my dog. The one I told you about at Pride.” Shane began.

“Remedy?”

She smiled discreetly at her girlfriend’s good memory, wrapping her arms around her lovers waist, “Yeah, Remedy.”

Carmen sighed contentedly and settled her arms on top of Shane’s, absentmindedly stroking her long fingers. “What color was she?”

“Grey and white. She was a stray, used to run around Santa Monica Pier chasing crabs and seagulls.”

“Husky?”

“Uh huh. She had these big blue eyes and they were so intelligent it freaked me out some times.”

Carmen giggled slightly at the thought of Shane being uncomfortable with a smart dog. She always seemed so comfortable and fearless that at times it was easy for the mocha colored woman to forget that even she had her idiosyncrasies . “So where did the name Remedy come from?”

Shane went quiet again, and this time the silence stretched out for a good minute. Carmen again waited patiently for the answer. She knew that Shane was picking and choosing just how much of her past she should divulge.

Shane let out a deep breath as she intertwined her fingers with Carmen’s. “When I was 16, I dropped out of high-school and ran away from my foster parents who were a bunch of assholes. I ended up in Santa Monica since I’d always loved the pier so I thought why the fuck not.” she chuckled to herself. “The first few nights I slept under the pier and scratched out whatever I could for food and stuff. After a month I’d made a few friends with the other street kids and we watched out for each other.”

Carmen tried to stop herself but she found herself imagining a younger Shane; scrawny, dirty, and so lost in the streets of L.A. She wanted so much to take that past away, to take away the scars that covered Shane’s heart and body and replace them with her love but she knew that couldn’t happen. Scars like those don’t heal that way. So she did the only thing she could do, she kept listening in the hopes that it would help the healing process she knew the woman she loved was constantly going through.